A Columbia University graduate student who served as a negotiator during campus protests against the Israel-Gaza war last spring has been ordered deported by a Louisiana immigration judge, in what legal experts are calling a significant test case for international students' free speech rights on American campuses.
Immigration Judge Jamee E. Comans ruled Friday that Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old international affairs graduate student and legal U.S. resident, can be forced out of the country as a national security risk. The judge stated the government had "established by clear and convincing evidence that he is removable" based on the government's contention that his presence posed "potentially serious foreign policy consequences."
The hearing took place in Jena, Louisiana, where Khalil was transferred shortly after his March 8 detention by federal immigration agents—the first arrest under President Donald Trump's promised crackdown on students who joined campus protests against the war in Gaza.
Attorney Marc Van Der Hout confirmed Khalil will appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals within weeks, meaning "nothing is going to happen quickly." Multiple federal judges in New York and New Jersey have already ordered the government not to deport Khalil while his case proceeds through the courts.
Speaking after the ruling, Khalil criticized the proceedings.
"Clearly what we witnessed today, neither of these principles [due process rights and fundamental fairness] were present today or in this whole process. This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to the court, 1,000 miles away from my family."
Khalil's legal team has characterized the hearing as "a charade of due process" and "a flagrant violation of his right to a fair hearing."
Khalil's case raises significant constitutional questions about the intersection of campus activism, immigration policy, and free speech rights for non-citizens. Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked a rarely used statute to justify Khalil's deportation, which grants him authority to remove non-citizens who pose "potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States."
Khalil, who is Palestinian and was born in Syria after his grandparents were forcibly removed from their ancestral home in Tiberias, served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists at Columbia University who occupied a campus lawn last spring. Notably, he is not accused of breaking any laws during the protests, nor was he among those arrested when police dismantled the encampment after a small group of protesters seized an administration building.
His attorneys have challenged the legality of his detention, arguing the Trump administration is attempting to suppress free speech protected by the First Amendment.
The case has wide-ranging implications for higher education institutions. The Trump administration has already announced it is withdrawing at least $400 million in federal funding from research programs at Columbia and its medical center, citing what it considers inadequate efforts to combat antisemitism on campus.
The government has stated that non-citizens who participate in pro-Palestinian demonstrations should be expelled for expressing views the administration considers antisemitic and "pro-Hamas," though it has yet to provide evidence supporting these characterizations of Khalil's statements.
This case is part of a broader pattern of immigration enforcement actions against campus critics of Israel. Authorities have arrested a Georgetown University scholar who spoke out on social media about the war, canceled student visas of some protesters, and deported a Brown University professor who allegedly attended a funeral of a Hezbollah leader in Lebanon.
Khalil's wife, a U.S. citizen who is due to give birth soon, remains in New York while he is detained in Louisiana.
